Catching Cold
by meenist
Summary: Ritsuka deepened his glare. Though he felt very little additional anger at the other, he had also known his fury to elicit delight in Soubi. He did seem a significant amount more cheerful, now that Ritsuka’s face was as intense and unforgiving as a rock.


Clearly, he had forgotten him. The end of school bell had sounded half of an hour ago, and he hadn't been there then. He wasn't here now. Soubi. What an idiot.

Huddled in the farthest corner of the school lobby, claiming a faded red loveseat as his secret quarters, Ritsuka watched the rain. Dreary, hazy, and very wet, the trees shimmied and swayed to a cold wind, invisible to flesh behind the window. Ritsuka curled his legs up into his torso, disappeared farther into the furry depths of his hood. There was a darkness there to compliment his affect. There was a warmth to counteract this familiar loneliness.

He couldn't expect much from Soubi. The man was as predictable as the storm outside, and twice as hopeless. Ritsuka had grown accustomed to Soubi's unreliability when playing babysitter, a responsibility he himself had refused to participate in quietly. But there was some pang of betrayal, some childhood anticipation crushed when Soubi's face was not among the others, when Soubi's cancerous cigarette butt wasn't dangling between his lips at the school gate.

He snuggled further into his jacket.

The schoolyard he overlooked was empty of life, all of it hiding in the archways and rafters of adjacent buildings to avoid the sleet. Ritsuka, in his bright-eyed vigilance, noted a sparrow braving the torrents. Even a bird, feathers cumbersome with rainwater, would fly to some promised destination. It left the boy contemplating Soubi while some feline instinct drew his eyes to every beating of the sparrow's brownish plumage.

It wasn't the rain that kept Ritsuka from walking home on his own. He'd been soaked through on many an occasion, wet until it made his skin crawl with peeling, sopping cotton. Though he shied away from wet he was not the kind to avoid it entirely. There was something very cleansing about the awareness of his own body, the way it would remember to decorate itself with goose bumps. So then why was he waiting here?

There were two equally distressing possibilities, the first inherent in the way he conceived his position: waiting. Soubi had promised. Soubi would not break a promise. Not anymore and not ever. Soubi…

Mom. Mom was the second reason for lingering in the empty lobby. Ritsuka set his jaw against the thought, lest it get the idea that it might tremble. Mom would be home tonight, preparing a meal that Ritsuka may or may not have loved before he forgot that he did. The fear that he may make the wrong choice about it paralyzed him. His mother's expression was clear in his memory. She would stare intensely at him from across the table, her heart visible in her long, pale throat. It would quicken, the closer he brought the utensil to his lips, and hers would open in imitation, wet, hopeful.

It's good, he would mutter quietly, his head down, barely tasting, mouth dry.

Is it? Misaki would ask, so softly that Ritsuka's black ear would twitch. Is it really? You think so, now?

He didn't think so. He didn't like carrots. Their misleading sweetness, the mushiness of them between his teeth. He was afraid to lie, and more fearful still of the truth. He sat before her, silent, avoiding movement except for his chewing so that she could not draw meaning from any of it.

Her palms were flat against the table, her spine listless and bringing her towards him. Ritsuka…you aren't Ritsuka. Far away, dark, the room itself dimmed and turning a blind eye on his inevitable punishment. The fork. The glassware. The hot cocoa or the painful sting of scalding water in the tub, where she'd drag him and cover his lips, his chest, his shoulders in burning and sadness and guilt for his existence.

I'm sorry. Darker. I'm sorry! Pain, in his chest. I'm sorry! Sorry sorry sor—

"Ritsuka," the gentle, warm spreading of heat, like that of freshly spilt blood, enveloped his senses. It even smelled of blood, spiced and something like a handful of copper pennies, and then simple metal, a zipper, cinnamon, rain. He only whimpered, for even in his darkest memories he never awoke in a fit of screams. He had already surrendered to the pain of his nightmares, awake or in dreams, and it had become his nature to go quiet in the shadow of its torture. The sensation grew arms, fingers, and a pale cheek against the roof of his head, comforting. The illusion cracked and washed away under a firm and sure embrace.

"Soubi," he tightened the grasp he'd managed on the other's damp overcoat, and hid his face against the strong beating organ he found there. Soubi's voice was deep with concern, and though unaccustomed to such desperate affection, sufficiently focused on the pain, on its alleviation.

"You have nothing at all to be sorry for, Ritsuka," the vibrations came through flesh, through tightly shut lids like a white-doved messenger, fluttering over his skull in careful patterns. Ritsuka's embarrassment was immediate and unconsciously medicinal, the humiliation at being caught whispering apologies to ghosts spurring his feisty response in an instant.

"I'm not!" and he was tearing himself away from Soubi, though the expression on the man's face stunned him into stillness, into wide eyed and weak opposition half way through his escape. Soubi was gripping him by the wrist, hard enough to assure him that he could not escape without a direct order, tender enough to remind him of his adoration.

"I'm not…" Ritsuka let his head drop, his hair obscure the cloudiness of his eyes. He let his arm go limp. Soubi released him cautiously, the joint there throbbing dully where pressure had locked it in place. The world came spiraling back to Ritsuka, and the reality of Soubi's tardiness came with it. His body, sick with the thought of his mother's ideas, rejected the images almost as if they had never occurred. Survival mechanisms sputtered and came to life, blocking out the abuse and redirecting him to the now, to the fact that Soubi was wet and late. He did not feel abandoned any longer, that emotion was too much akin to his mother's memory. Instead he was annoyed—the easy, childish display of behavior that for Ritsuka always hinted at more painful things. He looked up at the quiet Fighter beside him and glared with sincerity.

"You might as well not come at all if it's going to be this late. I would've walked home."

"But you didn't." Soubi was smiling a secret smile, and Ritsuka could feel his face grow hot.

"This time! But you can't expect me to wait around for you to show up when you feel like it!"

Soubi was still smiling, though there was exhaustion leaking through that veil of amusement, some gaunt and ethereal sense to the paleness of his cheek. Ritsuka felt fear in the pit of his stomach. It was as if the only parts of Soubi alive enough to communicate with him were dependent on that expression within his lips, on the weak and failing lifespan of a smirk. When he spoke, Ritsuka gasped, afraid the smile may disappear with his words. "All you have to do is order me to come on time."

Ritsuka deepened his glare. Though he felt very little additional anger at the other, he had also known his fury to elicit delight in Soubi. He did seem a significant amount more cheerful, now that Ritsuka's face was as intense and unforgiving as a rock, now that his jaw was clenched and his brows knit together in cross attentiveness.

"You're cute, Ritsuka."

"Erggh, shut up!" His own voice was pitiable in his ears. Soubi's had been low and melodious, hardly above a whisper, educing a shiver and that outburst.

"Command me."

"Enough with that, all right?!"

His tone seemed enough to placate Soubi, who bowed his head for the briefest of moments (smile still lingering) before standing. The couch groaned and fumbled under Ritsuka when its heaviest rider dismounted. He brushed aside a sleeve cuff to examine the watch face underneath.

"Hm. It should be ready now."

"What should be ready? Soubi? Soubi!"

Soubi had retreated a few paces before turning with an upturned palm. The hand seemed so smooth and inviting, hardly creased, large and flat and warm. Ritsuka hesitated, his uncertainty churning within his chest, the storm pressing against the window behind him. It cast an eerie glow over the Fighter, enhanced the heavy blonde of his lashes and mane, gave him the look of white tissue or crepe paper, or even stranger, the air of some beautiful and tired woman that had once held his features, possessed the crystals of his eyes as her own. A woman that had been a Fighter, like Soubi, and had imparted her willpower and her elegance unto him. His mother. Did Ritsuka too radiate the whispers of his own mother, delicate, dark haired, violet-eyed and absolutely insane?

"Ritsuka?" The spell was broken by another, that of Soubi's beckoning.

Ritsuka relinquished his hand and allowed himself to be uprooted from the bubble of warmth he'd created over the past hour. Soubi moved quickly and silently, disturbing almost nothing as he near dragged Ritsuka along, his jacket rustling against Ritsuka's shins. The boy twisted occasionally to outsmart the fabric, but it licked his kneecaps anyway, straight through the thickness of his jeans. He barely managed to tug the fur lined hood over his ears before being cast out into the rain storm and the wind. It hurried against his cheeks and nose and seeped into his neckline immediately. He shuddered.

"Come, Ritsuka. The faster we go the less time in the rain."

Ritsuka followed wordlessly, resolving that to look up or to open his mouth would be to fill it with unnecessary cold. He focused on the sloppy sidewalk cement beneath his feet, multifaceted and splashing, reflecting strange cloudy shapes. He trusted that Soubi would avoid the worst puddles, and surrendered his sense of direction to the other's judgment. Perhaps Soubi detected this—he squeezed Ritsuka's hand.

Sleepiness began to creep in from the corners of Ritsuka's vision, even as he ran. The methodical, quick steps of Soubi, as well as his own hooded ignorance of their destination lulled him into a very sure complacency. How much had he slept last night, after all? Not enough. How healed was the bruise where he had connected with the tub's lip? He couldn't remember. His body could feel the persuasive pull of sleep. The cold suddenly seemed very far away. His muscles felt no pain as he went, almost as if he wasn't running at all. Balance deserted him. Light as well. Ritsuka fell into a very peaceful, very enveloping darkness.

He woke instantly with a start, expecting that he may have lost consciousness and met noses with the pavement, or pathetically tripped into Soubi's quick arms. Instead he found himself sitting up in a bed, cast in dim light, very warm and comfortable and disoriented.

"Soubi," he called out surprisingly hoarsely, out of alarm and isolation.

"Here," came the immediate and gratifying response. It was a calm reply, devoid of apprehension, reassuring. It was enough to allow Ritsuka to lie back again without actually perceiving the man. He found the softness of a pillow under his head, scented of lavender detergent and something else. Paint? He felt that his hair was damp, cooling the back of his neck where he lay. His head was very heavy and clogged. An eggshell colored ceiling finally came into focus. The welcoming sounds and hot scents of cookery encased his senses, even those that were weakened. Soubi's apartment.

Ritsuka allowed his head to loll, to fall sideways so that he could examine the rest of the room. His Fighter's long back was to him, tending to the half concealed stove for just a flash before he turned with a maroon colored bowl and a set of chopsticks. Ritsuka groaned, his stomach in avid opposition to a meal, promising sickness. He blinked heavily to clear his vision, readjusted himself under a quilt that had presumably been tucked around him before he had bolted up.

"What's…"

"How long have you been feeling ill? You ignored it for too long…"

"I'm not…" The present caught up to him in its entirety. Though his first sensations had been those of comfort, the pain of a migraine headache and a terrible throbbing in both of his legs stunned him. "Ouch…"

Soubi winced. Ritsuka could feel him sitting on the edge of the bed, his weight bending the mattress and attracting him slightly with its gravity. "Forgive me."

He had enough energy to growl at his friend. "For what now?"

"By the time I acted, you had already fallen to your knees…"

That would explain the throbbing. He shifted his legs slightly. They cried out at him, ached, but some comforting tautness divulged to him that Soubi had bandaged whatever damage he had accumulated from the sidewalk. "Forget it," he said automatically, for Soubi's self-hatred was apparent on his face and in the way he gripped the bowl. The smile had diminished after all, but Soubi still existed. Ritsuka could hardly comprehend Soubi's demeanor. It was he who had tripped and fallen so pitifully any way, and if anyone was to be forgiven it was himself. He was not sure how long he had been lying there in Soubi's warm bed, unknowingly absorbing his hospitality, but there was still daylight outside. There was still rain, as well.

"I had to heat it up again," Soubi explained, gesturing to the noodles in his palm, "but it is still good. Sit up and try them."

Ritsuka moaned and succumbed to the lead in his brain. He wouldn't budge. "Not now, Soubi…"

But Soubi was gently wedging an arm under Ritsuka's frail state, lifting and propping him against another pillow. He found it moderately comfortable this way, and being too drained to really resist, endured with silence. The sudden heat of the bowl between his hands cleared his head somewhat instantaneously, and the scent chased away most of his upset stomach.

"Try it," Soubi ventured softly, enough to convince Ritsuka of any truth.

He brought the laden chopsticks up to his mouth, finding that he had more than enough liveliness in him to do so.

"…"

"Hm?"

"…Soubi!"

The smile was back on Soubi's face. Ritsuka assumed it to be a response of his own opinion, clearly unveiled. Soubi's cooking had never been lacking, but the earnestness of this meal, seemingly concocted to meet Ritsuka's every taste, delighted him even through this horrible cold. He stuffed himself with it all, nearly forgetting his condition. Though Soubi watched him intently, perhaps a little creepily, there was no dread, there was no caution. This was a serving created not to test Ritsuka's authenticity, not a trial of his amnesia, not a trap into which he would ultimately stumble. Soubi did not know that other Ritsuka, rightly or wrongly gone now, or what he would've enjoyed in a bowl of noodles. Soubi lived for the Ritsuka now, tailored his gifts around the personality that thrived, however unjustly. The folly of Soubi's late appearance at the school was inconsequential, and the juvenile affection one would feel towards a special gift won over the sense of deceitfulness he had been clinging to.

Soubi was blushing. Ritsuka was unaware of his own reddened cheeks, for his fever had dulled him to the gentle arousal. The Fighter—his Fighter—lifted his hand and pressed a thumb to Ritsuka's small chin. He wiped away the wetness of a stray noodle, but his fingers remained, stroking, teasing the sick-sensitive flesh with the ability to crush but the adoration to never do so.

Ritsuka's eyelids fluttered. Soubi could rub slumber into him in an instant, the way he fondled him like some pet. His fingers climbed and found his ears, which they touched in ways that cultivated the redness in Ritsuka's cheeks until he gasped hot air. The urge to lean forward and kiss the man flickered within him, in his mind to thank Soubi for reminding him, perhaps unintentionally, that he was worth the life he was living. As if understanding, as if reading the slightly parted lips, Soubi drew closer until the scent of art supply and sweetness and the meal were very apparent, all overcome with the misting of rain that still clung to his skin. It shimmered. It gave Soubi the glistening of an angel. His hair was long, soft, laced with inherent glitter. The bandage about his throat was fresh but coming undone, provoking Ritsuka to expose him. It would be all right to kiss him, wouldn't it? It was all right to kiss Seimei when he wanted to say I love you. Ritsuka leaned. His wild, unnatural eyes began to slip closed. Soubi's mouth was already hot against his permanent ear and whispering mumbled sweetness through his hair. One of his wide, long fingered hands was tangling itself possessively in Ritsuka's pajama shirt, searching for flesh. The other was massaging the thickness of his velvet tail, tormenting him with currents of dizziness in time with the squeezing.

Then Ritsuka stopped short, crying out in anger.

"Soubi! Where are my clothes!?" Ritsuka looked down at himself, realizing that he was dressed in the oversized, robin's egg blue cotton of Soubi's night clothes.

Guiltily and with the smile from before, Soubi disengaged. "They are drying in the other room."

"In the—SOUBI! You undressed me!?"

"Your illness may have become more grave had I allowed you to lay in damp clothes, Ritsuka."

Ritsuka swatted at him with the drive and strength of a very healthy child. Had he claws, they would be bared now as he swiped. Soubi evaded him easily, his smile threatening to boil over into a chuckle. Ritsuka went for him again, with both arms, and Soubi alighted from the mattress, sending the boy off balance. "Ergh!"

"I will make you another bowl of noodles, master." Soubi bowed low, but his lips seemed unwilling to uncurl or admit his vandalism. He turned for the stovetop only a few feet across the room, but to Ritsuka it seemed as if he had escaped miles out of his grasp. He learned back into his supple throne, grumbling.

Despite his vehement disgust, Ritsuka could not find in him any real anger at Soubi for taking care of him this way. He knew, somehow, that Soubi had not violated him in any way. Had not even dreamed of violating him. In fact, it was not the infringement of his personal space that enraged him. Not the nakedness, the vulnerability of his unconscious form. It was the embarrassment he felt, the utter helplessness and exposure he suffered knowing that Soubi would see all of his bruises. He would have seen how much of a coward and unwanted child he was. How little love he had to return. Yet Soubi had not penalized him for his wounds, nor even questioned their existence. He knew Ritsuka's pain, but he did not bare unnecessary evils. Instead, he nurtured and healed Ritsuka to the best of his abilities. Perhaps unable to successfully cope with abuse at all given his past, Soubi had treated Ritsuka the only way he knew how, the only way he could never have been treated in his own life. Without bias. Without judgment. Only love. Ritsuka concentrated on the depth of his body, on the blueprint of its treatment. He could discern two things. There was Misaki's vicious hold, her pain and her anguish thrust into his bones. Then there was Soubi. Cleansing, bandaging, and a single kiss on his collarbone, loitering there still.

He watched Soubi garnishing another two bowls of noodles. The man was so obviously broken; Ritsuka could see it in the thinness of his bare elbows, the unassuming movement of his shoulder blades. But he still worked to nurture another. He gave his all to the fondness for another, regardless of what master and slave relationship he depended on. Perhaps Soubi was more than what Ritsuka had generally given him credit for. Perhaps more than a blindly affectionate, perverted, dependent dummy. Just then, Soubi turned, still smiling widely, perchance proud of his noodles.

"I was just thinking, Ritsuka, that if you don't like the pajamas you can take them off before you eat."

"SOUBI!"


End file.
